Alix Turner
Feed Me, the new film written and directed by Adam Leader and Richard Oakes (who also made Hosts a couple of years ago) is about to have its UK premiere at Grimmfest. There’s plenty to talk about in this dark comedy horror about a cannibal (played by Neal Ward) and his willing victim; and all three of them laughed with relish when I said I had a lot of questions.
Starting with Adam and Richard, who directed, wrote, produced, and edited Feed Me, I cheekily asked whether that had meant they’d been reluctant to let anyone else join in. “Well, we would if we could,” said Richard; “it was the budget.”
Richard had started his film career in cinematography, so I asked what drew him to these other broader aspects of the job. “I did music videos for about ten years,” Richard said, “and then was asked to make a short film for another director, and fell into doing features because I kept being recommended. It’s great doing cinematography, I love it, but there’s obviously a creative point inside that means I’d love to have complete freedom to film what I want to film; so that’s where the directing side came from for me.”
Adam is a key member of a band as well, so I was curious to know whether any of the band’s music had been featured in their films. “Yes it did,” Adam said. “We wrote a song that’s actually in the end credits of this film, so we’ll be doing a music video for that at some point. It’s both for me: I started in the music industry but always wanted to do film too. I found myself going down the music road (that lasted about ten years, kind of in parallel with Rich), and we met each other during that period when he came to shoot a video. We discovered we both had this love—or obsession—with making very weird films, and that took us to where we are now.”
So having identified that click that got them together, I asked how the writing partnership works. “We always have some idea, a seed, and end up talking about it. Rich would say something, and I’d go ‘oh that’s amazing,’ and respond with something that would make him go ‘now that’s amazing;’ and we’d keep one-upping each other, making this idea even better or funnier, as we perceive it. Then it comes to a point that we’ve fleshed out this entire story of scenes from start to finish, over I guess about a week of late nights. I then take that away and turn it into a screenplay.”
“You can kind of critique each other,” Rich added. “If you run with an idea on your own, you don’t know if it’s any good; so there are times when we are quite humble with each other and open to saying ‘that idea’s actually quite bad’ or ‘it doesn’t make sense with this’. We constantly test each other and test the ideas: ‘what if we add that to help instead?’. Having that back-and-forth really helps.”
Neal had been in the cast of Hosts, as well as a primary role in Feed Me: isn’t he going to leave these guys alone? “There aren’t many people that will employ me,” he said with a modest laugh. I had seen and liked Two Graves, mind you, which arrived on Netflix before Hosts was made; Neal was chuffed to hear I’d enjoyed that. “I started doing guest appearances on Rich and Adam’s channel Dark Fable Media not long after that, creating silly characters. Then the guys had their idea of making their first feature, which was ‘crowd invested’ and made for a small amount of money compared to what you should comfortably make a film with. The guys were working on a different project with producer Ed Polgardy, a much bigger project in the US; then as time goes on, you can find yourself not physically doing much, because bigger projects with more money have these in-between periods. So then we had a go with this instead of hanging around. There are a few new faces, which is good, but I’m happy that they took me on again along with many others; everybody in the crew is friends by now, either starting out, progressing, or well-established; if you know people, you trust them. My part in Hosts was relatively small, and this one was more acting-based, rather than simply about physical presence.”
Somehow, I had the impression from these comments that Neal had been involved in the writing process; developing the character of Lionel, perhaps? “I like to stay in my lane, really,” said Neal. “If the guys threw an idea around, I’d give my feedback, but there was nothing written by me. There were some ad-libbed moments, though; Adam was really good with letting me go with that. There were some funny little things that came out of nowhere, and all of us were in fits of laughter.”
The character had really felt like Neal’s, mind you, so I couldn’t help pushing a little: was the American accent his idea? “Hosts had been all regional; all pretty much London or Oxford-based. We sold that and released it in America, despite COVID, and it did alright considering what we’d made that film for. I suppose what Rich and Adam did with the script of Feed Me, and what I wanted to do with the character; a film sells well in America if there’s something American in it… I mean they love us, but don’t always understand us; so we kind of wanted to add the American voice for that reason. That said, it was certainly a device for the character too.”
I saw it as a verbal disguise for Lionel. “Oh yes, very much so,” said Neal. “That’s Lionel in a nutshell. He puts on an act so that people warm to him easily, and then you find out what he’s doing. There were a few more things I added, to do with his physicality, to add to what he was: he always had one hand slightly limp, and an out-turned foot. The wig and glasses were the boys’ decision with costume.”
There was a line in Neal’s IMDB biography that told me he is “always portraying the darker and honest side of life!”. I asked Neal whether that is how he saw the character of Lionel in Feed Me. “For sure, hundred percent,” he said. “This is hard to believe, speaking to some people yesterday, but I received the final script from Adam when it had already gone through countless drafts with Rich and on paper, the script is very dark, very serious with elements of black comedy. I used to do a lot of comedy when I was younger, used to take off all the comedians back then, like my idol Rik Mayall; so I kind of like the slapstick side of things. I’m a huge fan of Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice and the way he portrays his comedy. With this, I did some accent classes, to make sure I did vowel sounds right, so as not to annoy too many Americans, and then I went in with a Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones kind of Jon Bernthal deep south accent; and then the first two days on set, it became something different, a fog-horn leghorn, blended with Eugene from The Walking Dead. The serious bits and the dark, harsh bits that Lionel shows juxtaposes well with his, not comedy but social awkwardness. There was a section that never appeared in the final edit where he was trying to date online and couldn’t get anyone because he kept saying the wrong things. That’s sad to me, seeing someone who just wants to be loved; but at the same time, he is doing that dark rubbish: he’s almost a child trapped inside a man like he’s wearing a cloak to protect him from it all.”
Feed Me was inspired by the real-life case of the German cannibal, Armin Meiwes, and his willing victim, Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes. I asked Adam and Richard about the writing of their film: how did they determine which elements of the true story to keep and where to diverge? “It’s inspired by his case,” said Adam, “but it’s an original story; that incident was a seed for our script that Rich and I discussed. We talked about how we’d love to make a film about a cannibal who somehow gets a guy to sign a contract that ‘legally’ allows him to be eaten.”
Regarding the tone of the film, a black comedy horror (for the most part), I asked whether the pair look up to any particular filmmakers that work in that style. “That’s a tough one,” said Richard. “We didn’t go into it with a lot of references, but it’s kind of where me and Adam just fall. We ran a YouTube channel for a year or two and taught some cinematography, camera techniques, and so on; and it was all done in a tongue-in-cheek manner, with a two-minute short film at the end each week that we’d just shot that night. It was always a black comedy, similar vein to Feed Me. We fell in love with that style, but there’s no denying influences like Sam Raimi, of course. There are other horror comedies out there that don’t fall into the same category, like Zombieland, but this is a different kind of comedy with a mix of serious and ridiculous. We like the barmy side of life, taking the craziness of an A24 movie perhaps and making it stupid, in a way; making stuff funnily bizarre or uncomfortable, so people laugh at things they feel they shouldn’t.”
“It’s a weird one,” added Adam. “Rich has his things and I have mine, and there’s a portion of favourite influences that we share; that’s all about the bizarre sense of humour. We couldn’t help to realise that when we made Hosts: we’d been trying hard not to implement that sense of humour there and it took a film that wasn’t truly us to make us wonder ‘why aren’t we doing a film that’s really what we feel?’. So we put our personalities into Feed Me. The underlying themes are serious, but it’s splashed with humour that breaks it up and makes it unique to the genre. I know it can be difficult to sell and difficult for some to understand; some people are really on the fence about it, but maybe that’s cool.”
I think films that divide an audience often endure, so that can’t be a bad thing. “We’ve had several comments,” said Neal, “describing Feed Me as a polarising film. And I’d rather have a film that provokes conversation or debate, so if one person loves it and one person hates it at least they’ll talk about it. Also, we’re all on a learning curve so we want to hear every opinion: it’s what you need to do to grow and be better, because you should always keep what you want to do fundamentally as your focus, but then you have to consider other angles and contributions from other people. Rich and Adam took on board all the comments from IMDB and trolls around the world when it came to Hosts, but it did make them really think about how to do their best with Feed Me. The more we learn, the more we can meet a wider audience.”
The characters in Feed Me were key to its success, in my opinion. The victim Jed Freeman (played by Christopher Mulvin) was clearly torn up with grief, and his late wife Olivia (Samantha Loxley) struggled with mental health in a major way. I asked my guests whether they had consulted with experts to get these issues represented right. “Pretty much,” said Adam. “People that have experienced pretty much the same thing as certain individuals in the film went through, for sure. I’ve been around a lot of people that have suffered with eating disorders, I’ve seen and been around that a lot since the age of about eleven or twelve; and I’m pretty sure I can speak for the others here too in saying we’ve all experienced some degree of mental health stuff, particularly as creatives, who can be kind of prone to it. We’re all experts of our own struggles. As for the eating disorder, I have some knowledge and empathy, and it is a debilitating issue to have, extremely tough.”
This prompted me to ask whether Adam had found it cathartic to write these issues into the story, or whether personal awareness was simply a valuable source. “Both,” he answered. “It was a whirlwind of emotions, but when it comes to putting pen to page, it was a really odd experience. Taking from those experiences, and speaking to those people who’d suffered like that, then adding my own experiences of mental health struggles, going into the dialogue with it… it was happy at times, sad at times, a real rollercoaster of emotions. Difficult, but therapeutic for sure, and the process felt true.”
“There was some editing,” Richard added. “On one of the drafts, there was something that happened, but a person Adam knows commented that it wouldn’t really happen like that, so we changed it. They had real lived experiences so we were open to the suggestion, even though the film is completely barmy and you’re not meant to believe all of it. We took seriously the parts that were sensitive, and we wanted to get an accurate representation if we could.”
Then there’s that less relatable or down-to-Earth topic: cannibalism. There have been a surprising number of films about cannibalism, so I asked why my guests thought that film audiences are so fascinated. Neal jumped in straight away: “I looked into this, and I think it’s because it’s so far removed from people’s everyday experiences that there’s always an intrigue. The fear of the unknown is always intriguing. Everyone likes to stand on the edge of the cliff and not necessarily jump off; there are a few that do jump off (whether it’s to cannibalism, murder, or other crimes). But I always think the mind is so inquisitive about how awful things happen that they reach for a simple answer, but it’s not simple. It comes from all sorts of abuse, self-abuse, ill-education; if you’re not educated with what goes on in the world and your moral compass is all over the place, then these people only do what they know or believe is OK. I mean most of us would know you can’t really do that, even if there is a contract. But most people just want to understand others who are very different.”
“I think the intriguing thing with this idea from the true story that we initially looked at,” continued Richard, “is that someone would give themselves willingly, and how do you make that believable in a script? How do you convince the audience that it’s believable? But it has happened, so it’s not like complete la-la land. It might seem completely barmy, but you have to wonder what would go through someone’s mind to push them into that. So that’s where the mental illness comes in: it’s the only thing we could think of that would push someone into that point. The willingness was so intriguing. It makes it strangely easier to watch: Squid Games was easier for me to watch than Battle Royale because everyone agreed to it. Feed Me is more violent than Hosts but more palatable for that reason.”
“Jed’s story is really interesting,” commented Neal. “He went through all that suffering, first in his relationship, then losing his wife, and then what he goes through with Lionel. And it’s incredibly well played by Chris Mulvin. But someone willing to give up themselves and sign a contract to be eaten alive must have some kind of mental illness, or so you’d think; and the way he plays it, giving it up so easily to be back with his wife, that’s a testament to his struggle. On the outside, he’s calm and collected (though you can see he’s depressed), but you can see how much he loves his wife. In the source story (about Armin Meiwes), both parties did what they did for themselves; in this one, the victim gave himself for someone else, in the delusion that he’d get back to her. That was partly Lionel’s doing as a manipulator, mind you: abusers are usually abused earlier in their lives.”
“Doing it for someone else,” Adam went on, “because you’re so guilt-ridden for their misfortune; and taking the journey from that is a journey of self-love: that’s something not many people do enough of. Particularly in this story, we want to see that journey.”
I stopped Adam from venturing into spoilers but must agree that Jed had an interesting arc in Feed Me.
Now, the UK premiere is coming up at Grimmfest. “I can’t wait,” said Adam. “It’s actually a strange time for all of us. We’re heading to LA on Friday for the world premiere at Beyond Fest, which is mad, it’s not really sunk in yet. Then we’ll be heading up to Manchester for the UK premiere the day after we land back here in the UK. We’re so excited though, can’t wait.”
“I’ve wanted to be a part of Grimmfest for ages,” said Neal, “whether it was to be a short or a feature film. It’s got an incredible reputation for its programme and the content they push out is top quality. They’ve been nothing but appreciative and loving of the film; and we go up against so many, then chosen as one of only two or three films to represent the UK. We tried it with Hosts, but the pandemic scuppered plans: it was only shown at Sitges and FrightFest, a lot of which was online, so we missed the whole festival circuit. We’re really looking forward to mixing with people this time, getting that feedback that I talked about earlier.”
According to IMDB, the team’s next film is Dirge, which looks somewhat more serious to me, from the write-up. “It needs a rewrite, that’s for sure,” laughed Adam. “It was actually the first thing me and Richard wrote together, one of those films that would need a significantly larger budget to be done properly, so we put it on the back burner. It’s been sitting there ready to go, waiting for a rewrite for ages. But we will do it soon, hopefully.”
“It’s been sitting there on IMDB since before Hosts,” said Richard. “We could take it down, or we could just do it, but it needs some real attention. We’ve also got a big budget film that was written before Feed Me and we’re in the process of getting that funded; and another five or six ideas on the back burner, depending on where the investors lean.”
The UK premiere of Feed Me will be screened as part of Grimmfest 2022, and if you can get to Manchester, tickets are now available.
